


The Crown and the Coins

by gypsyweaver



Series: A Tale of Crowns and Coins [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Bodyswap, Flashbacks, Gen, Ineffable Bureaucracy (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:20:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23516083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gypsyweaver/pseuds/gypsyweaver
Summary: Tandem teleportation is weird, and Beelzebub finds themself reliving one of Gabriel's memories.
Relationships: Beelzebub & Gabriel (Good Omens), Beelzebub & Michael (Good Omens), Beelzebub & Raphael (Good Omens), Gabriel & Michael (Good Omens), Gabriel & Raphael (Good Omens)
Series: A Tale of Crowns and Coins [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684990
Comments: 8
Kudos: 27





	The Crown and the Coins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zyla_Moonstone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zyla_Moonstone/gifts).



> CW: Mild body horror, no smut at all, not even a swear word
> 
> I didn't tag this with graphic violence, because there's no blood. If what happens is too squicky, please let me know and I will amend.

Beelzebub knew that teleportation was weird. Tandem teleportation was weirder.

There is a dilation of subjective time. Teleportation is instantaneous, or nearly so. But to the individual that is teleporting, it feels longer. Tandem teleportation has a few other fun side effects.

Beelzebub was startled to find themself not on a nameless beach in the Pacific, nor at their destination in New Orleans, but in the Garden of Eden. The scent of all the green and growing things lingered, warm and lush. They were near the waterfall, where God had placed a clearing.

Michael sharpened her sword, sitting on a large stone. “Shouldn’t mess with me,” she said, and humor twinkled in her blue eyes. “I’ve got a great big sword.”

“A sword?” Beelzebub said. But it wasn’t Beelzebub’s voice. It was Gabriel’s. This was Gabriel’s memory. Beelzebub was just a passenger, and a witness. “What’s a sword against all the might of Heaven?”

“How would you use all that might?” Michael dropped her whetstone and leapt on top of her rock. She leveled the sword at Beelzebub in Gabriel, all of her beauty in the liquid, feline way that she moved. “I’m their general. I tell them who to attack.”

“Hey, they have to do what I say!” Beelzebub laughed, raising both hands. They smiled Gabriel’s broad, open smile. “I sign their checks?”

“You think you’re more dangerous than me? You’re a beancounter! Ha!” Michael said, advancing down her rock.

But another voice laughed as well.

Beelzebub turned to the source of the sound. It was Raphael. Tall and slender, he leaned against a tree and watched his bickering siblings.

“Laughing at us, Raphael?” Beelzebub asked with Gabriel’s voice.

“Show me your steel, then,” Michael demanded, looking frisky.

“I didn’t laugh,” Raphael said. He swept a smaller angel from behind himself. A cherub. A very small cherub. Crystal blue eyes under a mop of black hair. Soft smile, shy in the presence of strangers.

Beelzebub was startled to recognize themself. More startled to be inside Gabriel’s head and to feel what he felt then. A gentle warmth towards this newcomer.

“Remiel, why don’t you tell them why they’re both wrong?” Raphael said, lazily.

Michael turned her sword onto Remiel, and Gabriel leveled his gaze on themself. Their memory was rusty...but they remembered how those violet eyes cut deeper than Michael’s steel ever could.

Remiel’s mouth opened slightly, lips parting over even teeth. Hint of tongue, flick and retreat. Beelzebub could feel how endearing Gabriel found it. Found them.

“W-we’re healers,” they said, softly. “I c-could discorporate you before your sword came down on me.”

“Really?” Michael asked, slowly twisting her sword. Mocking Remiel and their claim. “Really and truly? Let’s see it then.”

They looked up at their mentor. He knelt in front of them. Face-to-face, he spoke to them.

“Show them,” he said. He cupped their face in his hand. “You’re just as good as they are.”

He leaned forward and whispered something that Beelzebub didn’t catch, not in Gabriel’s body. But they did remember being Remiel in that moment, and what Raphael had said.

“You’re better. Better than they are. Show them.”

Remiel smiled at their mentor, and then stepped around him to face Michael and Gabriel.

“Is it both of you at once, or one at a time?” they asked.

“Absolutely not, not me, anyways. Michael, are you seriously picking a fight with someone half your size?” Beelzebub asked, but it was Gabriel’s voice. Gabriel’s memory.

“They signed up for it,” Michael said, with a shrug. “Even the little one is supposed to be ready for battle.”

“I’m fine, really,” Remiel said. “I’m going to win.”

“Gabriel, why don’t you do something useful, then, and officiate?” Raphael suggested.

“Me?” Gabriel asked.

“Well, she’ll just accuse ME of cheating,” Raphael said. “I wouldn’t, by the way.”

“Alright,” Beelzebub stood up inside Gabriel, and they remembered how the Archangel had looked in that moment. More of a bantam than an angel. At the time, they’d believed it was an act.

Remiel giggled at him, at Michael, at the whole situation.

“Have you even got steel on you?” Michael asked.

Remiel produced a silver knife from one sleeve of their robes and held it up for inspection. Small, silver, and sharp. It looked like it could handle chopping herbs, but it wouldn’t do much against Michael.

“Good enough, I guess. You ought to put a real sword in their hand sometime, Raphael,” Michael said.

Raphael shrugged, “They won’t even need the knife, Michael.”

As if to illustrate the point, Remiel slipped the little knife back up their sleeve and approached Michael.

Beelzebub could feel Gabriel’s nervousness. His desire to stop this. To get the little angel, (Archangel, Gabriel amended mentally) away from his sister and her deadly boredom.

But Remiel was focused. Watching how Michael moved. They smiled, big and bright in the early afternoon sun. It broke their little face nearly in half, but that smile didn’t quite reach those wide, blue eyes.

The effect was eerie. And, strangely, compelling.

That was the moment that Gabriel could see how this fight would end. That was when he stopped worrying about the littlest Archangel and began to worry about his sister.

“Why are you smiling?” Michael asked.

“You are so beautiful...” Remiel said. “Does...does anybody ever tell you that?”

Michael pinked in the apples of her cheeks, a flush that flooded her whole face to the tips of her ears. “No. Not really. No.”

“You are...lovely. More lovely now than you have ever been before. More lovely than you could imagine,” Remiel said. Their eyes softened, and Gabriel thought that they looked...almost sated.

Raphael chuckled low at some joke unknown to Gabriel, and Remiel joined him. Gabriel found their synchrony odd and unnerving.

“Gonna call the fight or what, Gabe?” Raphael asked.

“Uh, yeah. Sure. So, what? First blood?”

“Discorporation, stupid,” Michael said, still flushing.

“Or until someone gives up,” Remiel added.

“I’m not going to quit,” Michael said. “I’m not going to beg, and you won’t get any mercy from me. It’s my job to make you strong.”

“Make me strong, then,” Remiel replied.

Those blue eyes, so focused on Michael. They chilled Gabriel. Eyes like that could cut deeper than steel. His mouth was dry.

“Okay then...discorporation or until Michael gives up. Fair?” Beelzebub asked from inside Gabriel.

Remiel gave a curt nod, but their eyes did not leave Michael.

Michael laughed. “I could almost believe that you’re fierce,” she said. “Those seem like fair terms. Let’s get on with it.”

“Alright...” Gabriel said. “Uh...go?”

Michael laughed, but Remiel hadn’t moved. They watched Michael, and Raphael watched Remiel, and Gabriel watched all of them. And Beelzebub, a captive to Gabriel’s memory, watched along with him.

Michael advanced. She was fast, but Remiel moved out of the way at the very last possible moment. They just turned out of the way of her blade, and when she whipped around, they were facing her again. Smiling benignly.

“Lovely,” they said. “More lovely than you can imagine.”

“Are you serious?”

“Mm, yes.”

Michael launched herself at Remiel, who ducked and rolled, allowing her to pass over them. When she wheeled around, they were there, smiling.

“Are you playing with me?” she asked.

“Are you having fun?” they asked, still smiling at her.

Michael roared and threw herself at the little Archangel, who spun out of her way, then gave her a sharp shove to the hip. Michael tottered and went sprawling.

Remiel stood on her blade with one foot, and brought the other firmly down on her wrist. Michael shrieked, and released her sword. Remiel kicked it away, to Raphael.

“That’s fine,” Michael said. “My sword would only make this go faster.”

Again and again, she launched herself at Remiel. Again and again, they moved. They remained completely still unless they were dodging. Feint and dodge. Around and around. The sun reached for the horizon and the sky bloomed like the bruises that decorated Michael’s pale knees and elbows.

Remiel had not even broken a sweat. Just moved around Michael, letting her tire herself out.

Raphael was watching the fight with a very casual interest. Like a book he’d read many times before. He already knew the ending.

Gabriel wasn’t breathing. Beelzebub could feel it. They remembered what he’d looked like from when they lived this day as Remiel. They remembered the stark difference between Raphael’s casual interest and the far more pointed interest of the Angel of the Dawn.

Michael made one last exhausted strike, screaming as Remiel kicked her legs out from under her. She fell on her face. She tried to get her feet under her again, but her exhausted muscles wouldn’t work. She was disjointed and uncoordinated.

Remiel knelt beside her and turned her over. They smiled, just on half of their face. A wicked, triumphant smirk. A shadow of the demon that they would become lived in that smirk.

It turned Gabriel’s stomach over. Curiosity, interest, and another feeling. It was new to him, and he would not be able to categorize that particular emotion for millennia.

“I haven’t used any miracles, but I could have,” they said, lowering their face to hers, pulling a curl of her hair behind her ear. They were as tender with her as a lover. “I could have turned your bowels to water. I could have frozen your muscles. I could have stopped your heart. But I did not.”

Michael’s eyes began to leak tears from her exhaustion, her rage at being defeated, and now, her fear. Her fear that the littlest Archangel might hurt her, might discorporate her, might win.

“When is all of life the most lovely?” Raphael asked, his voice mellow and soft.

“When that life is about to end,” Remiel replied.

“Why?”

“Because only as the sun sets can we appreciate the dawn. Because only as the light flickers can we appreciate the gift of life.”

“Good.”

“You’re nothing but meat, now,” Remiel said, still gently combing Michael’s hair from her face. “You’re meat that’s still breathing.” They ripped her robes from the neck to the navel and pulled them away from her chest, and then they took her hands by the wrists. She tried to protest, but she was too weak. “You’re nothing but meat with a pulse.” They crossed her wrists, and then laid them on her chest. “You became meat the moment you decided to point your sword at a healer. What we know how to mend, we know how to rend.”

Gabriel was mesmerized (Beelzebub could feel it) by the way that Michael’s skin melded together under Remiel’s touch. Her wrists joined to each other, and then to her chest. She still breathed, but shallowly.

“Why must it ALWAYS be to discorporation? That’s so much work for us healers.”

Remiel pulled Michael’s robes around her pinned wrists, then stood up. They went to her feet, grabbed both ankles and straightened both legs. They smoothed her robes around her, and patted her insteps.

After that, they reached their hands to the sky, and a swirl of colors raced to their outstretched fingers. Flowers. They wove themselves together, and Remiel laid a crown of flowers over Michael’s brow. They collected two small stones from the ground.

Remiel looked down at Michael, who was breathing in sharp, jagged little pulls. They reached a gentle finger out and closed one eye, then the other. The skin melded, and Michael began to panic when she realized that she had lost her vision. Remiel laid the stones over Michael’s eyelids.

“We haven’t had anyone die yet, not truly. But God has already given us instructions. You must be laid out in your fine linens, with a crown of flowers, and stones on your eyes,” Remiel said, laying a gentle kiss on her forehead. “All that’s left is to bury you. Do you want to be dead and buried, Michael?”

Michael didn’t say anything. Remiel sighed.

“I want you to know what it would feel like, then you can decide.”

Beelzebub remembered what they did, but Gabriel had no idea what was happening to his sister. Remiel used a miracle to cause the feeling of pressure. To use Michael’s own skin to constrict her. To press her down. To hold her, and force the air out of her lungs. Her ribs began to cave in, and she finally cried out.

“Forfeit! Forfeit!”

The last thing that Beelzebub saw before the end of the teleportation was their own benign smile as they bowed to Gabriel, and then returned to Raphael. The last thing that they felt was Gabriel’s deep awe of them.

Then, they landed in the home that they kept in New Orleans. They coagulated quickly, from a swarm back into their skin. They still wore the same form that Sandalphon had commanded, but that was a secondary concern.

They felt whole and unhurt, and their arms were around Gabriel. He felt unhurt, as well. In the dim crust of twilight, streaming through the gap in the thick velvet drapes, his violet eyes regarded them. Beelzebub saw the same respect and awe in those eyes that had once caressed clever Remiel, in the Garden.

**Author's Note:**

> Crowley is not Raphael in this work. Thought I'd get that out of the way. My Raphael is fairly consistent over all of my works (yes, even when he Falls and becomes Asmodeus in [In Essence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21665542)). He's not Crowley, because (Biblically), Raphael sounds the horn to start the Apocalypse. A horn was sounded in the series, and not by Crowley. So, Raphael exists in the series, and is not Crowley. 
> 
> My Crowley is Iblis.
> 
> About the burial ritual: Eventually, people started using coins to close the eyes of the dead, but in the beginning, it was stones.
> 
> If you've ever seen [Departures](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1069238/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2), the encasketing ritual inspired the scene.
> 
> I wanted to include something of the Garden. So, here you go. The smallest Archangel, the one who would someday become the demon Beelzebub (and the merciful god Ba'al Zebal) mentored by Raphael--and showing off a bit to the bigger (more stab-happy) Archangels.
> 
> Comments and kudos are the life! Concrit welcome!


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